"You surely did," said Gibson tartly, and taking up the last of the sticky mess with a wet towel, "and I suppose you'll do it again, or some of the rest of you boys will. It don't make much difference which," and she moved off slowly.

"Gibson--Gibson," said Mrs. Sterling gently.

"Oh, Gibson!" Joel flew after her and twitched her ap.r.o.n string.

"What is it?" She turned on him with asperity. "I never will upset the mucilage bottle again, I won't, Gibson, really."

"See that you don't," replied Gibson, moving off with small faith in such promises.

And another promise had that very evening been made, just before the boys had gathered in Mrs. Sterling's handsome sitting-room.

Curtis Park had been through several spasms of distress over his attack on Jack, when, whirling around from the friendly att.i.tude he had chosen to a.s.sume, he had made a tirade on the grocer's son. Look at it whichever way he might, it didn't seem pleasant to view. And all the delight in the fire and the companionship of Mr. Dyce, of whom all the boys were exceedingly fond, was suddenly blotted out. He went home that night, and crept into bed, a most disconsolate boy.

"I was a beastly cad," he fumed, kicking the covering down to the foot, and rolling out with the vain attempt to find some diversion. But that being impossible, he tumbled in again, with his unhappy thoughts.

And all through the following days, go whichever way he might, there was the fact to stare him in the face, that he, Curtis Park, who had hitherto prided himself upon his fine manners, had dropped from his height, to blackguard a boy, who, despite the fact of having been born the son of a little grocer on Common Street, had yet shown himself capable of the height.

"It's no use to deny it. I've been a bully and a cad," he groaned, and wiped the perspiration from his face. "What can I do!"

There was only one way, and he knew it, just as well at first as after all the fencing with himself that ensued the next few days. And at last on this very evening, he stopped fighting the idea, and marched up to what it suggested, like a man.

"See here, will you, though I shouldn't think you'd want to speak to me."

It was a boy who said this to Jack standing on the step of the grocer's front door, next to the shop.

"Hey?" said Jack, in a great bewilderment. Was that really Curtis Park, whose rap on the door had announced him?

"Oh, it's no use to deny, Jack," said Curtis, speaking rapidly and desperately, "that I've been a cad--a mean, low cad--to talk to you in that way. It's done, and can't be helped now, only I want you to know what I think of it."

Jack swallowed hard. He was going to put out his hand, but luckily thought in time, This is Curtis Park.

"I don't wonder you won't shake hands with me," said Curtis, who saw the movement. "I'm no end sorry; and perhaps sometime, Jack, why, you will."

Jack's brown hand shot out so swiftly it nearly knocked the other boy from the doorstep.

"It's all right," he said heartily.

"And you will never have another chance to call me a cad, I promise you,"

declared Curtis, wringing it. "Come on now, Jack"--hooking him by the arm--"it's time to go to Mrs. Sterling's; this is the evening, you know."

And the boys who had begun to think they had made a mistake in supposing that Curtis Park had taken a fancy to Jack Parish, were pushed back into their first conviction by seeing them come into the meeting of the Comfort committee arm in arm.

XXVII

A PIECE OF GOOD NEWS

Polly Pepper ran down the steps of Miss Taylor's house, and set off at a lively pace on the pavement. Presently she came to an abrupt stop. "Oh, how could I forget, Mamsie wouldn't like me to run in the street," she thought remorsefully. And this took away some of the glad little thrills running over her.

When she got to Mrs. c.u.mmings' very select boarding-house on the avenue, there was Miss Rhys at the window of her room, looking up from her embroidery. When she saw Polly Pepper, she smiled.

"Oh, it's you, Polly; I'm glad to see you."

"Is Alexia there?" called Polly, looking up, and feeling her lovely bit of news dancing within her again, so that she could hardly control her impatience. "Do tell her to come out, please, Miss Rhys."

"She isn't here. She went down-town."

Miss Rhys laid her precious work in her lap, and put her face close to the window screen. "Her candy wasn't a success, and she's gone down for more confectioner's sugar."

"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Polly, quite gone in distress over the failure of the candy, and feeling very helpless in the fact that there was no one to tell her news to, for of course Alexia must be the first one to hear it.

"Which way did she go, Miss Rhys?"--lifting a troubled face to the window above.

"I don't know," said Miss Rhys absently, her mind on her embroidery, and very much wishing she could return to it. "She was going to your house, I know, for one thing, on her way down."

"Oh, she couldn't have gone there," cried Polly, "for I should have met her on the way."

"So you would," a.s.sented Alexia's aunt, wondering whether the bunch of grapes should be filled in solid, or worked with the mixed st.i.tch that she had seen in a shop. "Well, then, I think on her way back she was going to see you, Polly."

"Then, I am going to run down and meet her," declared Polly, with a long breath. "Was it Pennsey's where she was going for the sugar, Miss Rhys?"--pausing a moment.

"Yes," said Miss Rhys, turning back with a sigh of relief to her embroidery again, while Polly hurried off, wishing that she was a boy, when it would be quite proper for her to run through the streets.

"Oh, if it were only Badgertown!" she sighed to herself, thinking of the many happy runs she had enjoyed down the lane to Grandma Bascom's cottage, or over across the fields to the parsonage. "Dear me!"--when a voice, "Polly Pepper, Pol--ly Pepper!" called after her. She looked back, and there, with the window screen up, and her face thrust well forward, was Alexia's aunt, loudly summoning her.

When she saw that Polly heard, and had turned back, she beckoned smartly with her long fingers, on which shone, as Alexia had once said, "all the rings the Rhys family had ever owned," drew in her head, and waited till Polly came up under the window again.

"Oh, Polly, it's just this--how fortunate you hadn't gotten far. I want you to tell Alexia to get me some more green floss at Miss Angell's."

"Yes, Miss Rhys," said Polly, with a dismayed remembrance just how far it was to the little shop where the very latest patterns and materials for fancy work could be obtained, and the first supper of the Cooking Club to be given to-night!

"And stay, Miss Angell may send me up some more patterns to choose from; that is, if she has had any new ones since I was there last week, and I presume that she has."

Polly could only utter, "Yes, Miss Rhys," so very faintly it could scarcely be heard. Dear me! and it was three o'clock already, and all that candy to be made over again!

She crept off on very dismal feet, till she reflected it wouldn't help matters any to lose heart, and so she set forward at a brisk pace again.

Miss Rhys pushed down the window screen and set to work with a complacent smile at the prospect of having her errand performed so nicely.

"That's the good of having young people around," she said; "it's so convenient at times to get one's errands done."

Polly went the whole length of North Street to the great establishment of Pennsey's, where the avenue people traded. But search as she might, up one aisle and down another, there was no trace of Alexia; and inquiring of a clerk at the sugar department, if she had been there, he whipped his pencil out from behind his ear, and picked up his order pad before he stopped to think.

"She's just gone," he said. "Yes, madam"--all attention to the next customer.

Polly hurried on rapid feet. It was half-past three by the big central clock as she went down the main aisle--well, she must hurry home, for Alexia was probably on her way there, as Miss Rhys had said, when, "Dear me, Polly Pepper, wait!" struck her ear.

She turned, and there before an opposite counter was Alexia, picking up her package of sugar and preparing to race after her.